


From Russia With Flu

by MittenCrab



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Flu, Fluff, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic, pre-blackwatch era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-23 02:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8310376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MittenCrab/pseuds/MittenCrab
Summary: There would be something vaguely hilarious about it, about the world’s most elite blackops force being almost crushed by a seasonal virus, if he wasn’t lying sweating through two layers of clothing and hacking up a lung on some shitty sofa in the middle of godforsaken-nowhere.[Jack gets sick, Gabriel is caring, Russian winters really fucking suck. (gift fic for nb_vint)]





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nb_vint](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nb_vint/gifts).



> This is tiny and short and hasn't been beta'd. I basically just wanted to give a small fic gift to nb_vint because I love them a lot and they're the Gabe to my (white-ass) Jack and they're feeling sick right now. Since I can't bring them any cold meds or soup, this will have to do.

“Fuck me. You look like _shit_ , sunshine.”

 

Jack cracks open one eye to see Gabriel staring down at him, arms folded. He’s been dozing for so long he’s lost sense of what time it is, crammed, shivering, into the too-small sofa of their latest safehouse. 

 

“You’re observant. Want a medal?” He coughs, feels it rattle grossly in his chest like the sick timbre of a hundred tiny bones snapping at once. Gabriel raises an eyebrow and leans back on his heels. The way his eyebrows are furrowed makes Jack think that there’s a fair chance he looks at least half as bad as he currently feels. He currently feels like he’s dying.

 

He blames Russia, of course. Russia with its merciless winters and endless, scraping cold. At last count, three of them have been put out of action by some particularly aggressive strain of Slavic flu. The mission was supposed to be simple. Intelligence collection, a sweep of the Kemerovo omnium done quietly enough to prevent any tension with the Russian Federation. Instead, it’s been nothing short of a bureaucratic and tactical nightmare. Three men down and four days overdue, his communicator has barely stopped blinking with the tide of incoming messages.

 

There would be something vaguely hilarious about it, about the world’s most elite blackops force being almost crushed by a seasonal virus, if he wasn’t lying sweating through two layers of clothing and hacking up a lung on some shitty sofa in the middle of godforsaken-nowhere. Over the course of his career, Jack Morrison has taken more bullets than most squadrons, had his nose broken so many times it’s a miracle it’s still on his face, and been declared clinically dead for more than three minutes, but in this moment he’s sure nothing’s felt as shit as Novosibirsk in December. Not for the first time in his life, he yearns for the gentle winters of Indiana. 

 

He’s drooled on the thin cushion he’s pillowed his head on. It smells like stale, burned out cigarettes and something vaguely flammable. Usually his overwhelming, knife-sharp senses would have him gagging at the smell of months-old-nicotine and musk and questionable life decisions, but he’s too sick and stuffy to care. 

 

Gabriel is talking, and Jack lets his voice blur into a low rumble of background noise. He closes his eyes again and tries to ignore the grasping, scratching urge to cough. 

 

“Hey! You listenin’?” There are blissfully cool fingers against his forehead, and it feels so good he almost wants to sob. “Shit, Jack. Flu got you bad, huh? You look like hell.”

 

"Fuck you,” Jack says, “You really know how to make a guy feel special."

 

Gabriel snorts through his nose. 

 

There is the sound of footsteps, and for a moment, Jack thinks he’s been left alone to his misery. He shivers, muscles aching, acutely aware that he’s cold and that his shirt is clinging uncomfortably to the sweat on his skin. When he reluctantly opens his eyes, Gabriel has his back to him, rummaging in the MDF cupboards that make up their temporary kitchen. 

 

The kind of life they lead means that their cupboards are perpetually empty. They’re never in one place for long enough to make it worth stocking up. Detachments come thick and fast, scattering them across the globe like ashes thrown to the wind. Sometimes, when he’s wrapped up in the warmth of Gabriel’s arms and listening to him snore, Jack lets himself dream of a little house in California, of hazy, pancake-and-coffee mornings, of long blue-and-orange dusks with good whiskey. 

 

They can’t have it. Of course they can’t. That doesn’t stop him wanting.

 

“You know,” Gabriel says conversationally, fishing through orange pill bottles and endless sachets of instant coffee as though it’s the most normal thing in the world, “all these years I thought this crap was meant to make us superhuman, and yet here you are. Captain America killed by the flu.”

 

“Shut up, Reyes.” Jack grumbles, and tries to ignore the way that his head is pounding, sickly streaks of lukewarm lightning flickering behind his eyes with every heartbeat.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel laughs, a soft, huffing sort of a sound, and comes back to Jack’s nest of cushions. “Sit up.” 

 

The sudden movement makes his head pound. Jack blinks slowly as a bottle of water is thrust into his hands. He stares at it stupidly for a long moment, fighting the headrush.

 

“Drink.” Gabriel prompts, as though he’s a child. When he complies, the water is cold and it feels wonderful against the scratching of his throat. He swallows down the antivirals Gabriel presses into his palm, sniffs morosely. Every part of him aches.

 

The sofa shifts next to him under Gabriel’s bulk. The whole thing groans under their combined weight, not designed for the muscular bulk of two super-soldiers. Jack wants to complain, to tell him to fuck off and leave him to suffer in peace, but as soon as he’s lying down again and his head is pillowed in the warmth of Gabriel’s lap, the protests die in his throat. Gabriel smells of sandalwood and spice and cigarettes. Even in the midst of the Russian winter, even through the fever shivers, he smells  _ warm _ . Jack lets out a long breath like a sigh and presses into the soft heat of Gabriel’s thighs.

 

Gabriel’s hand is soothing through his sweaty hair, and it feels so immeasurably  _ good _ that he almost moans. The motion is calming against the relentless pounding of his head, against the sandpaper-tug of each inhalation in his lungs, against the radiating, hot-cold  _ ache  _ in his joints. Jack closes his eyes and lets himself get lost in it.

 

He thinks of training. Training had been a special, highly classified breed of hell - a dizzied fever-dream of injections and pills and convulsions and sweating and side effects. He still remembers, as though it’s programmed into his muscle memory, the screaming, sinew-deep pain after a seizure. He still remembers the heat of Gabriel’s hands massaging away the cramps, Gabriel stroking his hair through the endless vomiting, Gabriel sitting with him and watching the news through the night whilst the serum set his veins on fire. 

 

“Just like old times, huh?” Gabriel says, eventually, as if he’s read his thoughts. There’s rough, comforting warmth in his voice, in the way that the corner of his mouth lifts in a hint of a smile as Jack glances up at him. “You never took those injections well.”

 

Jack wants to complain that Gabriel didn’t exactly take them well either. He wants to remind him of 4am, of finding Gabriel almost-dead on the kitchen floor under the glow of the fridge-light, of spilt beer turning sticky under convulsing muscle.

 

But thinking about it makes the nausea worse, makes it coil, thick and greasy in his stomach. “Fuck training” he manages miserably, and tries to focus on keeping his breathing even, “Fuck SEP.” As an afterthought, he adds; “Fuck Russia” for good measure. 

 

Gabriel laughs then, ruffles Jack’s hair. “Fuck Russia.” he agrees. 

 

Jack dozes to the sound of Gabriel talking and talking and talking about things that he can’t even understand. His head feels full of glass splinters, but the steady rhythm of the other man’s voice in his ears is comforting. One of Gabriel’s hands is massaging the tension from his shoulders in thick, slow circle, absently stroking around the nodules of his spine and draining the stress away. He yawns, presses into the reassuring softness of Gabriel’s body and lets himself relax.

 

The mission is a disaster. But somehow, he thinks, as he slips in and out of consciousness on Gabriel’s lap, he doesn’t give a fuck. He feels like shit, but there’s a gentle hand in his hair and the reassuring, low rumble of Gabriel’s voice lulling him to sleep, and it’s everything he’s ever wanted. 

  
It’s not exactly a little house in California, but it feels so goddamn  _ warm _ . 

**Author's Note:**

> [You can find me on twitter as @mitten_crab!](https://twitter.com/mitten_crab/)   
> 


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